Who Went Nazi?

  (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

It's not often that magazine articles or internet articles stand the test of time for even eight years, let alone 80. Yet, lately, I've been seeing on the Intertubz an occasional reference to Dorothy Thompson's landmark article, "Who Goes Nazi?", in the pages of Harper's that had first made its appearance in August of 1941. That was, of course, just a few months before Pearl Harbor yet nearly two years after Hitler invaded Poland. Nazism had already began casting its baleful pall over the planet and was well known and understood by a handful of journalists.

    Thompson, obviously, was one of them. In fact, during an instantly infamous rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939, Thompson was famously ejected from it (although allowed to return). The rally was infamous because it managed to gather 22,000 American Bund under one roof, bizarrely with a giant full-length portrait of George Washington behind the stage, with the full protection of the NYPD. And five years before that, Thompson was expelled from Nazi Germany.

    It's difficult, if not outright impossible, to imagine any of today's female, or even male. print journalists having half the balls of Dorothy Thompson, a woman who would've given even Helen Thomas a run for her money. She was the first woman to lead a news bureau and inspired the character played by Katherine Hepburn in 1942's, Woman of the Year.

     So, Thompson was obviously a huge foe of Nazism and fascism and, even more vexing to the Nazis of the era, was widely listened to during her heyday and was considered as influential as Eleanor Roosevelt. All things considered, it's amazing the lady survived WW II. And if one were to read or reread her article from 1941, one would recognize certain types that one seems to see in greater abundance today.

     But Thompson had already used the motif of a fictional cocktail party in which she, as the invisible guest, could coolly appraise at a distance. I will use no such setting and will focus, instead, on existing members of Congress during a fictional Congressional Committee hearing. Parallels will be drawn from time to time between these members of Congress, specifically the Sedition Caucus and actual historical Nazi figures.

     Ergo, if you support the Republican Party even now, nearly a year after Trump was expelled from office by the American voter, you might want to stop reading right here. When I got into this game nearly a century or two ago, I did so with the mutual understanding that I would not be here or anywhere to expand anyone's comfort zone.

The Hearing

 

It's January 6, 2023. According to the zeitgeist of over a year before, the Republicans have taken over the House and Senate. As usual, in the first midterm election of a new administration, the American voter decides to hobble the agenda of the new president rhey'd just elected by giving him a majority of foes in the legislative branch with which to contend in which the "loyal but principled opposition", in this case, the crypto Nazis still posing as Republicans in a functional democracy, vow to stand in the way of any progress regardless of how popular certain policy proposals are with the American voter who put them in the catbird seat.

    The January 6th Committee, incredibly, hasn't been disbanded. Or rather, it would be incredible until one saw the radically-changed agenda of the Republicans now controlling it. Adam Kinzinger is out, since he'd decided in October 2021 not to run for re-election. Liz Cheney was shoved off naked and shivering on an ice floe in Antarctica after losing her House seat.

   Marjorie Taylor-Greene is now the chairwoman of the committee, having been given back her committee assignments by now former Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy had been reduced to eunuch status, figuratively and literally standing on the edges of power, his hands crossed over his groin. Greene makes the new January 6 Committee hearings newsworthy by occasionally patting a sealed jar containing McCarthy's testicles.

     As she promised in late 2021, Greene had promised McCarthy would not have the votes to be House Speaker, a position famously coveted by the former Minority Leader who could not even hold on to his role as the House leader of what used to be his own party. No longer Minority or Majority Leader, a post now held by Matt Gaetz, with Jim Jordan the Majority Whip, it is a cryptofascist dream come true.

   As the zeitgeist had also predicted, Greene had won reelection in Georgia-14 because the vast majority of her voters hurl themselves into mud pits to show their Dixie bona fides and the more hirsuite of her constituents shave the number "3" on their backs. (Some of the more creative ones tattoo on their bodies "6MWE"- Six Million Wasn't Enough.). The same had also applied to Gaetz, Jordan, Louie Gohmert, Boebert and virtually all of the Sedition Caucus.

     The Committee hearing is gavled to disorder by Chairwoman Taylor-Greene. And the true agenda of the January 6 Committee in this new 118th Congress is finally revealed. Because, on this, the second anniversary of the Capitol riots that eventually ended up leaving nine dead, over half of them police officers who'd mostly committed suicide, the committee is now investigating the original investigators of the original 1/6 Committee.

The Notorious MTG

 

As Chairwoman of the 1/6 Committee, as well as Chairwoman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee and Chairwoman of the nearly as powerful Oversight and Ethics Committee, Greene is now a force to be reckoned with. That particular force was merely implied during the 117th Congress when she started kicking McCarthy in the nuts and he grinned and bore it, still naively believing he could count on the Sedition Caucus to lift him to the Speaker's podium.

     Greene is an odd duck. It would be easy to dismiss her as a power-mad lunatic but Greene does not seek power in the conventional political way because Greene is not interested in convention. She's more like a bomb-throwing anarchist who doesn't care about the wreckage she creates or what or whom she destroys, as long as she gets heard after the dust settles.

    Marjorie Taylor-Greene is motivated, instead, by an incoherent, teeth-baring rage or anyone that even has a whiff of anything to the left of outright Nazism. She is what is ominously referred to as a "true believer" because she believed in conspiracy theories regarding Jews and, by this time next year, will stop referring to them as "global elites" and will call them out by their religion.

     This is why she is the one people should be looking out for. She doxes people within her own party and stands back and gleefully watches the death threats pile up. Like Trump, she is the ultimate coward and allows others to tribally commit her evil deeds, like Adolph Eichmann. the desk murderer.

Matt Gaetz

 

Matt Gaetz slides into the Majority Leader's office once occupied by Kevin McCarthy on a tidal wave of styling gel and pure, unadulterated sleaze. The federal sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz suddenly disappeared when it seemed he would be the new House Majority Leader. For much of his third term, Gaetx always seemed to have one foot out the door. He'd teased speculation that he'd leave Congress before 2022, that he'd go to work for Newsmax until they declared they'd never offered him a job and had no intention to

     No one obsessed with clinging to power would even think of resigning from the sweetest gig they'd ever gotten and in so blithe a manner. Gaetz is like Hermann Goering, a man who was obviously ruled by his gross appetites (He weighed 360 pounds at the time of his capture). Gaetz is an attention whore like Greene and Boebert, enamored, as was Goering, of the pomp and circumstance and all the privileges and trappings of federal office. He lives for the attention of the office, not the refined power it gives him and he is a slave to his own appetites.

Lauren Boebert

 

Lauren Boebert would've been perfectly at home at Ravensbrück, the notorious concentration camp for women. Hell, she would've been at home in any of them, including Auschwitz II (the death camp) or Bergen Belsen. As with Irma Grese and Ilsa Koch, advancement in any death or training camp was largely if not entirely dependent on the degree of sadism dished out to the oppressed victims and Bobo has that in spades.

     Like Greene and Gaetz, Boebert has no legitimate political ambitions and, lile Jim Jordan, relishes more the megaphone public office gives her. She is solely on the 1/6 Committee to scream about Ihlan Omar and AOC. She infamously cleans her Glock during Committee hearings, not so patiently awaiting her turn to speak before she immediately begins shrieking incoherently about Socialists and jihadists within the Squad.

     She is another bomb-throwing attention whore but, unlike most, has the guns to back up her bullshit. She'd stated in 2021 that she'd attack random people if she wasn't being talked about on social media.

Kevin McCarthy

If he was around 80 years ago, Kevin McCarthy, rejected by the Republican steering committee from landing a seat on the 1/6 committee, or any other, he would've dutifully make regular treks to the Eagle's Nest or Hitler's house at the Berghof. He's one of those fawning, deferentially-tilting functionaries who desires greater power than they can meaningfully wield. He wants to be a good Nazi but he doesn't come close to achieving that ideal and in the 117th Congress, when he was demoted from majority to Minority Leader, his go along to get along style of management just made hm countless enemies on both the left side of the aisle and the Nazi Republicans.

     Kevin McCarthy is a marginally-animated bowl of grits minus the bowl. He will kiss any ring (or ass) as long as it promises to get him an endorsement from even a famously unstable "genius" like Trump. Like the aforementioned bomb-throwing attention whores, McCarthy craves attention like a baby relegated to the kiddie table on Thanksgiving. But unlike them, he has ravenous political ambitions necessary for the perfect toadie and, moreover, he wants power the traditional way and wants nothing to change in the power structure. People like Greene, Gaetz and Boebert want to break off the levers of power and anally rape their political enemies with them.

     He timidly knocks on hearing room doors during committee hearings begging to be let in and is not so gently guided away by the House Sergeant at Arms, Bernie Kerik.

The View From Mordor

 

How can all these things, and much more, happen in the United States House of Representatives? Aren't there rules put in place that prevent these things from happening? Are there not safeguards put in place to keep Greene from referring criminal charges against Bennie Thompson, her predecessor, to Attorney General Rudy Giuliani? 

    Well, there used to be. But many things had changed since the 118th Congress took over three days ago. But now there's an Electoral Integrity Select Committee and the resurrection of HUAC, or the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Many exciting things are happening and not "exciting" in any positive way but "exciting" in a Chinese imprecation kind of way.

     And these committees and initiatives have been put in place largely through a Republican majority but they wouldn't've have even come up for a vote were it not for the Speaker of the House, a lazy man's idea of what Adolph Hitler should've been.

     I'm speaking, of course, of Speaker Donald Trump, who handily took full advantage of a loophole that desperately needs to be closed that states the Speaker of the House doesn't even need to be an elected member of Congress.